Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Mosiah 2:17 -- On Love and Service

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."
Mosiah 2:17

The idea of serving God *through* service to our fellow men is a very frequent one in the scriptures, and I like that it is referred to as wisdom here. ;) Perhaps that makes it a good theme for today. The two concepts can't be extricated from each other. God commanded us first to love him and then to love our neighbors, and loving our neighbors is a *way* of loving and serving him, so all of it is intertwined. Sometimes people are hard to love, and we often need space and independence... and those things are okay, but we have to also remember that we can't just give up on people and all become hermits. :) God asks us to serve him by serving others, so sitting on the top of a mountain and praying all day is cool, but it falls short. We do have to find ways to interact with others, to show love to them, and to serve them patiently and kindly.

Sometimes we're tempted to blow people off because they've messed up their own lives, or they don't treat us well, or any other fill-in-the-blank reason. But when we do that, we are missing the point I think. God asks us to learn to love as he loves, and he wants to bless the lives of others through us. God loves us *despite* our sins and limitations and bad choices and rudeness, and all the rest. He doesn't disown us when we screw up, and he is always willing to welcome us back if we turn around and ask forgiveness. Today, let's try to do the same for others. Let's love as God loves, and serve others in his service.

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The scriptural commentary presented here is based on books of scripture recognized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so you'll see scriptures from several books like the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, etc.

This collection started in 1999 as the Scripture of the Day email list (before there was a blog). The search on this page doesn't always work for the older scriptures, but you can still get to them in the archive. I am in the process of adding all the older content.